


Blueberries

by snowshus



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Blueberries, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:26:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28578213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowshus/pseuds/snowshus
Summary: Holden brings back some supplies from his trip to earth.(missing scenes from the beginning of 04x01)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	Blueberries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blueberry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberry/gifts).



Cap had asked them all if they wanted to come down to Earth with him after everything that happened at the ring but really the only one he was asking was Amos. Naomi and Alex wouldn’t be able to make that trip, not really. It’s would be impossible for Noami without drugs that might not even work and with barely enough time between Venus and Earth to get them into her system. And while a planet was a planet, Martian average gravity was closer to Ganymede’s than Earth’s. Alex wouldn’t crumble under the weight of Earth’s pull the way Naomi would but it wouldn’t be a comfortable stay. 

Truthfully, Amos probably would have been fine on Cap’s farm and it might have been nice to see the sky again, and a body of water bigger than a shower stall. And gravity--getting to feel the weight of his own body again--that would have been real nice. But he’d died once to get off Earth and he doesn’t want to have to die again. So he stays up in orbit with Alex and Naomi and the closest he gets to the place he was born was staring down at the white swirl of clouds over the blue seas. 

Cap comes back with supplies, the kind you really only get on Earth. He’s got three big duffle bags just full of food. Not the usual spacer food, either. Not the wheats and soys and oddly shaped strawberries that grow in the bread basket of Jupiter’s orbit. It’s food that never made the jump that couldn’t adapt or be adapted to the low gravities and high radiations of the other planets. One of the bags filled entirely with zucchinis, long and yellow-green with the thin skin. Zucchini’s grow on Mars and in the gardens of the belt but they are round and bluish and their skin is thick like an orange. He’s also brought up meat.

“Real meat? Like from an actual real cow?” Alex had asked, holding the temperature locked bag like it was made of pure lithium.

“Real meat, from a real cow.” Cap assures him with a grin.

“I never had real stake before.” Amos grabs a few of the packages and throws them into the ship’s cooler.

“Never? Not even when you lived on Earth?” Naomi asks, working to find a place for all the zucchinis.

“Nah, mostly we just had protein packs, sometimes eggs. I think I ate real chicken once. But it might have been vat chicken.”

“Keeping cows just for the beef is still a might too wasteful on Mars,” Alex says. “But we got a few small dairy farms up and running and when the cows get too old they sell them for meat. There’s so little of it though that you end up on the waitlist for years. My grandpappy finally got a single cut of steak when I was maybe ten and the whole family came over, twelve cousins, six sets of aunts and uncles and we all got just this one little tiny bite, but it was so good. Like nothing you’ve ever had.” 

“Well there is plenty of steak for everyone here.” Cap says handing a couple more bags off to Amos for storage. 

Cap’s happy. He’s always happy when he manages to do something like this - give them things they couldn’t have before. At first Amos thought it was part of the trade. Cap sent them into dangerous situations and, in return for their loyalty, he got them little gifts like this. It was a good strategy, bred devotion instead of just obedience. Most bosses Amos had known growing up preferred loyalty born from fear rather than gratitude. Amos could only speak from his own experience, but he figures at some point fear eventually goes numb for everyone, while gratitude is a continually renewing resource. 

He doesn’t think Cap does it as payment or guarantee of loyalty anymore, at least not consciously - not the way Amos would. He’s pretty sure Cap would still bring them duffel bags of zucchinis and steak whenever he could even if they all left him tomorrow. He likes doing it. Amos thinks he probably understands that. He likes working up the Roci on it’s own but he also likes the way it makes Alex grin when she slips from 0G to 3 smoother than she had before. He likes seeing the way Naomi’s shoulders relax and she stands taller when she knows he’s at her back. If he could give them steaks he would, and he wouldn’t want anything in return. 

Cap’s grin grows with every excited discovery Alex makes: apples and avocados and pumpkins and watermelon. Food that grows on trees or that grows big, that you have a hard time getting among the outer planets. 

“Are these blueberries?” Naomi asks, holding up a big container full of blue spheres. 

“Yep, but they’re mostly for Amos. If you and Alex like them you can share, but they taste pretty different from the variety that ended up growing in low G. I thought you might miss the old earth flavored ones.” He turns to Amos holding out the container. Amos has gotten used to the Belter variety of blueberry. It's a bit bigger and sweeter but mealier and it’d lost that slight tartness of its Earthen ancestors. They were fine, but Cap was right: they weren’t the same. 

“I used to get blueberry muffins from this one cafe near the water.” Amos concedes, taking a few berries out of the container. “I miss those muffins.” 

Cap’s smile gets bigger. “I’m sure we can figure out how to make some.” 

*****

There’s a strange smell in the galley when Amos goes in for his breakfast the next day. It’s not technically morning because there is no such thing when you’re in space. The Roci’s computer measures things in the familiar 24 hour cycle so they can get a feel for how long they’ll be travelling but Amos’ mornings and evenings are on a different schedule from Cap’s or Naomi’s or Alex’s. They’ve worked it out so at least two people are always awake, always on duty - just in case. They eat together once a day but dinner for one of them is breakfast for another. For Amos’ family meal is usually lunch so he doesn’t expect to see anyone in the galley.

Amos doesn’t identify the smell until he sees the covered plate with his name in Alex’s slanted script. It’s not actually a muffin. It’s more like a small round loaf of bread, or maybe a scone. 

The foriegn smell was baking sweets. It’d been so long since Amos had smelt it he’d forgotten. He remembers suddenly the way it lingered in the hallway outside Lydia’s rooms. There’d been a family who’d lived down the hall, and when business was good enough for them to afford the ingredients the grandmother would make cookies. The smell of sugar and flour and milk heating up would fill up the whole floor. She’d given Amos some once, in repayment for protecting the youngest girl from some asshole who’d been sniffing around their building. He’d completely forgotten about them. 

He takes his not-quite-a-muffin to the cockpit where Alex is sitting in his chair, watching the trajectory and gravity lines shift. He’s not really flying like he has to when there’s something to interact with. He’s just watching the way space moves. 

“You made me a blueberry muffin?”

“Well, it’s more like a small loaf of bread,” Alex equivocates. “We didn’t really have the right fixings for a muffin plus the flour is soy and butter is soy and the egg might be soy too and I wasn’t sure about the proportions because them earth berries are mighty sour so that changes the whole flavor profile…” Alex starts rambling on about food and cooking Amos sort of tunes him out, breaking off a part of the blueberry bread thing and tasting it. It’s a little over sweetened, probably Alex trying to compensate for the perceived sourness of the berries. It’s good though.

“How is it?” Alex asks.

Amos holds out a piece to him, making sure he’s got a blueberry in the mix. 

“I made it a little too sweet,” Alex frowns.

“I like it sweet.” 

“Well then it was entirely on purpose,” he laughs, licking a crumb off his finger. Amos goes back to slowly eating the pastry and Alex goes back to watching space. A pilot Amos had known back when he’d been living on Luna had once described flying as trying to hit a moving dart board while you were too drunk to stand up straight and your friends kept grabbing your arm for attention - everything was spinning and shifting and just when you thought you’d lined yourself up right some gravity well would tug you out of alinement. He’d been an okay pilot from what Amos can remember. He got Amos out to Pallas station when things had gone sideways on Luna and they’d made it there in one piece, which is all Amos had thought he should ask for from a pilot. 

Amos doesn’t think Alex would describe flying that way. Amos doesn’t know much about what goes into piloting. He likes the way little things fit together, parts moving in synchronicity for a single goal. Everything has a purpose and if it doesn’t work you can figure out why and fix it, replace the broken bit with something new. The kaleidoscope display of space Alex is watching doesn’t really make sense to him. Everything moving on it’s own yet influencing everything else in the whole universe, interlinked but utterly separate with no purpose or reason gives him a headache. It probably gave that pilot on Luna a headache too. Alex looks enraptured. 

It doesn’t take long for Alex to start talking again. He never was one for sitting in silence. Sometimes he talks to Amos and sometimes he talks to the ship. He doesn’t seem to really expect a response from either one of them at this point. It’s nice. Amos doesn’t have much to fix on the ship at the moment and nothing that needs immediate work so he can just sit in this chair for a while listening to Alex talk about nothing much. It’s familiar.


End file.
